Fall Away

It was a icy blustery Saturday morning when we arrived at the south side of the mountain. The wind was cold and smooth; as our cheeks froze and turned apple red, we took a couple of minutes to review our pre-flight plans.

The instructor checked our helmets and the attached radio's and then and there we discovered the batteries to be dead.

Toast! Relief and disappointment had a quick game of tug of war before my sweetheart decisively left to get batteries.

I kited my loaner paraglider; reviewing the lines and the 'flight plan" (Flight plan = float a few seconds to the bottom). I marveled at the strong, steady air, my instructor chuckled, "Its not enough for you to fly in this morning". In twenty minutes or two split seconds, batteries had arrived.

No less than a hair space later I ran to the edge and felt the world drop 300 feet (I swear it was a billion feet) from beneath me.

Hanging there, I looked down and around and thought “Wow.”

The radio whistled and cracked in my ear and I jumped out of my skin, “Let’s go ahead and take a left turn.” The voice said through the static.

A left turn? I thought about that… oh, yes. I remember there was something about pulling on the left handle a bit to turn.

That is really really far down. I don’t remember the hill being quite this far up. The ground swung up just a little and I remembered the air was my friend now; it was the ground that could be unfriendly.

“How about starting the right turn?” The voice suddenly asked. Again I was so startled that I nearly left the harness.

Gosh… There is nothing under my feet for a really long way! How disconcerting...

I leaned heavily into my right turn and the glider slowly swung sorta right. The thing really felt like an indulgently fat boat. Good natured about the whole turning thing, but definitely not in any hurry about it.

I wonder how far up I am? I have been up here forever. I wonder what I can see from here? I squinted out and then back down at the dusty rocks and grass. Wow, this is really far up!

Later, on the ground, as I packed up the glider, I realized I had forgotten the "flight plan". I had completely forgotten fear. I had forgotten that I owned a dog or really wanted a box garden. In fact I could not tell you anything about anything while I was up there for those thirty second years.

I remembered that I forgot to really look around. I was too fascinated by the fact that the ground had never before been that far away from just me and my feet.

Two hours later the adrenaline stopped shaking my hands. Two days later my toes are still tingly.

The World I knew

What if the world could be the one I once lived in? I like this one just fine but there was a great exodus at some point and this world is missing genuinely important pieces of what made it so wonderful in the first place.

Like the King of the Sea. Where did He go? As a child, when I would walk with my feet in the surf I could hear his court. Let me explain, I knew then that the King of the Sea was no longer there but I could still hear the echoes from his court, just as I see the light from stars burned out and dead long ago. Today, the echoes are increasingly faded. My adult ears have become dulled but I also think the world is louder and the echoes ever older.

And where are the unicorns?  Serious thinkers, taller than horses and a great deal more slender. I found their hoof prints when I was five or six, when we first moved to New Orleans. I saw her reflection at a park that was a swamp, the first swamp I had ever been to. Baby alligators and lily pads surrounded the wooden trail that was a raised bridge winding through heavy trees and screeching calls of creatures unknown. I saw her as I leaned over the bottom railing, too short to see the view everyone else did.

I saw her tracks first and then her lovely eyes. Her mane was the color of the moss hanging thick and rich from the trees. Her body was just a ghostly breathe against the wildly green terrain. And her eyes… There was something terrible and lonely in her eyes. I stared as hard as I could, trying to memorize her beauty, because I knew in that instant I would never see her again.

What happened to the dragons and monstrous wizards? The dragons who drew in smoke, exhaled flames to release pure fury? Where are the Wizards ? The guardians, rogue bandits and withdrawn manipulators?

Ah the world I remember. Sometimes I dream I am walking through a great hall of long ago. I am achy and homesick in this dream, remembering. As I walk, the brush of fine threaded fabric traces my legs and arms. Stone walls are bright as gold with sunlight baking them and I watch the dust dance in the rays. My hair is thick, jet black; my eyes are green and I am littler then now. I am wearing purple and I have a dragonfly tattooed on my upper right shoulder.

Does anyone else have this active of a childhood imagination and do you struggle in this adult world because that imagination has stayed through adulthood?

Buyer Beware

Recently my mother was in need of a new set of glasses as her eye sight has slightly changed. We found a coupon to JC Penny in the mail and after making a visit to their eye doctor she ordered a pair.

A couple of weeks later they were ready for pick up and off she went. In tow was her father, my ninety four year old grandpa, to whom my parents are full time care givers.

Upon their arrival to the mall, my Grandpa found he was too tired to walk in. He said he would wait in the car for her. She hurried in (it was February and too cool for him to be out for long) to pick them up.

Upon placing the new pair on her nose for a quick adjustment, my mother discovered they were blurry. Dismayed she pointed this out to the sale woman who shrugged off her concerns and said her eyes would adjust. My mother contradicted her and said that these were indeed very blurry. Was a mistake made? The woman again down played the issue. My mother was worried about her father and unable to argue the issue further at that moment. She agreed to try them out over the weekend.

There was no improvement, of course, as the lenses had to be wrong. She went back to the store to ask for their advice and to have them fixed. There she found cold shoulders, belittling comments and snide whispers “She didn’t want them to begin with.” Confused my mother insisted that she did need new glasses, per the new prescription, and did want the ones she picked out it was only that she could not see. After much dispute she procured an appointment with the eye doctor to prove her case. The appointment was a couple of days later.

The disapproving eye doctor set her down in his office and proceeded to administer a stern lecture regarding her age and how her eye sight will be affected by her age. He assured her that he often sees customers with ‘buyer’s remorse’. She sat with her hands folded and listened until his conceited and assuming sermon was ended to his haughty satisfaction.

Upon his lengthy closing, he asked her to put on her previous glasses and to read to him a line from a page he gave her. She did this without trouble. He then asked her to read the same page while wearing her new glasses. She was unable.

At last he conceded to actually LOOK at the lenses of the new glasses and upon comparing them to her prescription this educated person found that the new lenses were indeed different from the ones she was to have been given.

When the inspection was complete and the discovery certain, did he apologize for his tirade? When he brought the discovery of this error to the sales person, did she apologize for her trite remarks and the berating she gave in response to my mother’s request for help?

No. Not one of them did. After four visits to the store, she will hopefully pick up the correct pair of glasses on the fifth. They did advise her that they will not charge the fee for expediting the replacement of the wrong lenses.

Buyer Beware! This place employs arrogance and meanness.

Just right?

One was too soft and one was too hard….

Last December we decided that we had to have a new bed. Both of ours had become true tacos and to get a good night of sleep on either was futile and ridiculous.

We went to our local furniture twice, tried out a couple of beds and on the third visit made a decision and purchased the one we thought was just right. Delivery was in one week.

We prepared our welcome a couple of days ahead of time by clearing everything out of the room. We dusted the bureaus and straightened our things. We vacuumed and shampooed the carpets. We bought new sheets and washed them twice.

The bed arrived in an evening.

For two nights we slept peacefully…. On the third…. I rolled ever so slightly to the middle. The fourth he rolled slightly to me... could this be that noticeable before even having it for a week? On the fifth night we had to knowledge in horror:

This was a Taco Bed!

The store’s policy required that we keep the bed for thirty days before excercising a onetime swap to exchanging a bed you didn't like for a different one. Our arguement was that this wasn’t about liking the bed… it was that it was a taco bed.

Regardless of the lemon we were sold, we had to wait. Disheartened after our excitement and warm reception, we were sometimes sleeping in the second bedroom on our old taco bed.

Thirty days later, it turned out that the warranty covered the bed. The inspector came and confirmed the sinking and the manufacturer covered it in full. The local store treated it as if we had not received a bed and we were given the chance to start clean.

This time we tried on of those tempur-pedic beds… My man was excited. This was his dream bed. For years he had collected paperwork, advertisements and recited commercials. The idea of no pressure points and not tossing had haunted his imaginings.

Night one… first of all. These beds are stinky. Not a gagging type of stink but they have a strong odor of musty rubber. Which in all fairness, does fade quite a bit… or you lose your sense of smell. Which ever comes first. Either way, I stopped noticing it after a couple of weeks. On the day of delivery I was at work and at lunch I met my husband at our home to inspect the new bed. He reassured me that it was extra hard because it had been closeted in the truck and was cold.

The bed was cold?

He went on to say that as it warmed to the temperature of the house it would soften up. Honestly I was intrigued too. We both have lower back problems and a remedy would be brilliant.

Fast forward thirty days. We nap extremely well on The Brick but a good night of rest has yet to be found. We wake up aching with stiffness. The Brick is just so hard. If we kept the house at a warmer temperature it is possible we would find it softens up but we like sleeping under blankets -And who heats a house for a bed? Plus I sleep hot and this bed was cooking me as my body heat is trapped by the material it is made up of.

Sadly we went back to our resigned sales man and we decided to go with a firmer version of the first bed we ordered. My guy takes care of the exchange information on a night I am at school and delivery and pick up was to be this morning.

Only… the sales man had not entered the delivery... only the pick up!

Ergh....

Its one of "Those" mornings.

For starters I left late and forgot my coffee. Which means I also left my coffee maker on and the creamer out on the counter. I remembered this as I pulled out of the drive way. As I stopped and pulled back into the drive way my wheels locked. Despite my hitting the brakes (or perhaps because I hit the brakes), Katie and I slid neatly into the rocks framing said driveway.

Sigh...

Gratefully there are only a couple of new minor scratches. I went inside, picked up my coffee mug only to discover that the lid was not quite on. As such it popped off and steaming coffee sloshed hotly over my hands and wrists and splattered the floor around the fridge.

Sigh... oh well the house is beyond dusty and the floors are dirty and I planned to try to get on top of the place this weekend. I mopped it all up, re-filled the mug, turned off the coffee maker and put the creamer away.

Back outside I inspected the rocks. The tire tracks leading to the crime were already beginning to disappear in the fresh, messy and wet snow. I thought about moving the rocks back into place but I decided they could wait until after work.